


led to the flood

by sandandsalt



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandandsalt/pseuds/sandandsalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And their clothes are on his floor, scattered like shells, the fallout from simply existing together in a space like this, between frames and flashes and trying to find stories in empty bottles. It’s her doing, the mess. A leviathan of unfastenings, undoings, unpromisings that she leaves in her wake; he will pick up every inch of it, smooth every crease, hang every suit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	led to the flood

He always knew she was going to leave him.

-

Thirty-six photographs and then you need a new reel. Thirty-six photographs of her sitting against the window, lying on his bed. He fusses with her then. Undoes the first button. Does it up again. Tries the third. Keeps the second one shut.

”If you want to keep your hands between my breasts, Randall, you only have to ask.”

-

They’re used to making love knowing that the world around them is dying, that some child is screaming, newly motherless. That when he presses his hand against her hip, someone has been shot there. Invisible scars cover the negatives of their bodies. (And their clothes are on his floor, scattered like shells, the fallout from simply existing together in a space like this, between frames and flashes and trying to find stories in empty bottles. It’s her doing, the mess. A leviathan of unfastenings, undoings, unpromisings that she leaves in her wake; he will pick up every inch of it, smooth every crease, hang every suit. This is closest thing they have to love. This is the only love they know.) They make love in the dark, drown their mouths in alcohol, disinfect the wound.

When they’re done, there’s the flicker of fire, smoke gathering around her mouth and an amber glow on the bridge of her nose, the corner of her lips.

He thinks about telling her she’s beautiful; he never does. (He doesn’t have the words.)

(No, that’s wrong. Editor’s note, addendum, the words he has. It’s the voice he doesn’t.)

-

War stories aren’t really war stories, not after all the years. They just become stories. And then they become history. They didn’t die in Spain, but they grew old, thought they did.

Maybe they were history before they began. Maybe that’s how the world works.

So they don’t talk about the future, not in simple question and answer, not in the way everyone else seems to. They make decisions though, impulses. Paris. Paris with its steel lattices and firework promises. Paris, where she sits on his bed, their bed, and goes through the photographs, one by one. Her camera resting on her thigh, her toes suspended over the edge. She doesn’t wear glasses then, but her lipstick is the same. He leans over, fingers trapezing over the dust, over his photographs (technical and narrow, centred and framed) and hers (angles, emotion, she always just knew), and caps her bloody lens (a nightly ritual), kisses her mouth.

Is it history or a eulogy? The differences are few and far between.

-

Towards the end, they take to sharing a single glass, one cigarette. He argues, silently, that it’s more efficient. She strikes the match; he pours out the drink. Glass on glass, blowing smoke rings into the emptiness between them. Practical. They can pretend they aren’t alcoholics. He takes the cigarette from her fingers, inhales long and hard, thinks about just how many are left in the pack, ashtray countdown. (She will always taste like this. Whiskey and gunpowder, the parts of the war still buried under their skin, the reasons they stay together, the reason they’re going to fall apart.)

Four cigarettes left, sleeping side by side.

He can pretend they’ll last twice as long as they’re meant to.

-

She leaves the cap on his desk when she leaves.

(It’s the farthest thing from an apology, but it’s the closest thing to an explanation. He never expected any different.)

-

Take a picture of the apartment. The elephants she left on the desk, the one suit of his she folded (a gesture of love or resentment or maybe despair, maybe none of it, maybe nothing at all). She had pulled the tacks out of place, punched them across the board, but the pictures of her, hanging on the edges, two pins in the corners, are still there. Clothes scattered on the floor, the ashtray, the empty bottle of whiskey. It’s a crime scene; it’s a puzzle. He takes thirty-six pictures and then disassembles the wreckage. He folds and folds and packs it all away, strips the apartment bare and lines all the tacks into neat army rows.

And then spend a week, a month, the odd weekend with the pictures, all thirty-six, spread out on the floor. Try to get it right again. Try to fold the jacket like she did. Fiddle and fuss with the elephants until they’re standing at that exact same angle.

He’s not romantic, this much he’s sure of. He’s never had it in him. Not in the traditional sense. Neurotic would be closer to the truth. Obsessive, only sometimes. (He doesn’t like leaving a job undone.)

He convinces himself he’ll get it right one day.

**Author's Note:**

> i really don't know how to write them yet, but this happened regardless. sorry about the lack of characterization and all that good, necessary stuff.


End file.
